The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

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In from the Cold: An assessment of the scope of Orphan Works report (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Organisations across the UK’s public sector are responsible for the management and provision of access to a huge range of content in many formats. These are likely to range from works with high commercial value, such as fine art and commercial films with attributable artists and/or rights holders and collecting societies, to works of low commercial value but high academic, cultural and historic worth, such as documentary photographs, letters and sound recordings, where a recognised rights holder is unlikely. The report shows that millions of so-called ‘orphan works’ - photographs, recordings, texts and other ephemera from the last 100 years - risk becoming invisible because rights holders are not known or easy to trace.



Australia in the digital economy
Report 1 - Trust and Confidence Report
Report 2 - Online Participation

From the Australian Communications and Media Authority website

These reports cover Australians' attitudes and behaviours to online security and privacy; issues of digital confidence and skills; take-up and use of the internet; and factors which influence people’s decisions to participate or not participate online.



Archives, libraries and museums as communicators of memory in European Union projects

From the Information Research: an international electronic journal website

This paper explores the approach to communication of memory in archives, libraries and museums in European Union research projects in 2000-2005. The main objectives were: to identify predominant aspects of heritage communication; to determine whether and how heritage communication was related to memory; to establish patterns of participation in projects by determining types of institutions and their country of origin. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out to identify the most visible aspects of heritage communication, interrelationship of memory and heritage and impact of certain institutions and countries on the development of project ideas. The analysis revealed that the definitive features of archives, libraries and museums were collections and information management processes. Meeting social needs of present communities and developing meaningful stories of the past were almost not considered. The domination of libraries and museums in information and cultural projects respectively was identified, while archives were the least visible.


The Metadata is the Interface: Better Description for Better Discovery of Archives and Special Collections, Synthesized from User Studies (Note: PDF)

From the OCLC website

Structured metadata can be useful internally for collection management and public services, but is not always what users need most to discover primary sources, especially minimally-described collections and “hidden collections.” Studies show that users often do not want to search for collections by provenance, for example, as important as this principle is for archival collections. One of several core competencies that special collections metadata librarians must have is “a keen understanding of users’ needs and preferences.” This is especially important now that discovery happens in multiple environments. Librarians and archivists need to manage archival collections by provenance, but also must describe what is in the collections for their users.


Booking the future

From the openDemocracy website

Is the book dead? Can the six huge publishing conglomerates, a.k.a., the Six Sisters, rescue books? Will publishers find a new profit model? Can bookstores survive the internet? Can writers make a living? What about e-books? Is Kindle the beginning and end of the revolution? Will Google Books be literature's savior or executioner?


Reading Dickens Four Ways

From the Chronicle of Higher Education website

How 'Little Dorrit' fares in multiple text formats.